kinky

Apr. 6th, 2011 04:07 pm
sergebroom: (Default)
[personal profile] sergebroom
There's something kinky in a bureaucracy that demands that you write specs for something even though you've already done the actual work, after which they ask you to officially approve your own specs.

Date: Apr. 7th, 2011 01:01 am (UTC)
pedanther: (Default)
From: [personal profile] pedanther
I would suggest that they might want to have accurate specs on file for the benefit of anyone who might have to come along and maintain or update it later - but that sounds too forward thinking for the workplace you tell us about.

Date: Apr. 7th, 2011 01:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] serge-lj.livejournal.com
My specs took about one paragraph in a long standardized document and basically said "This new feed is identical to this other feed in structure, except that it comes from somewhere else and we have to run it thru our normal processing." The purpose of the documentation is less a matter of being forward than of covering managerial backward ends. Ever since the merger, this outfit has become riddled with bureaucracy, which is ironic - it became successful and grew because it was more interested in results than in paperwork.